1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed herein relates generally to the field of sheet-feeding and more specifically to apparatus for moving edge-stacked documents through a hopper and into serial frictional contact with a document feeding means and for effecting this movement while jogging and mutually aligning the stacked documents.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A document feeding apparatus employing the principles of the disclosed invention forms part of a document reader-sorter which provides for the automatic reading of data recorded on documents such as bank checks, and for the automatic sorting of the documents according to the date recorded thereon. A stack of documents is manually placed edgewise into a document hopper, from which individual documents are serially fed at high speed by feed means along a transport guideway. The documents travel past a reading station where a read head reads the indicia recorded on each document and selects one of a plurality of pockets into which the document is to be deposited. A more detailed description of such document feeding apparatus is provided in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 554,579, filed Mar. 3, l975, such application being assigned to the assignee of the present application.
In document feeding apparatus of the type briefly described supra, document feeding from the hopper requires that the documents be brought into mutual alignment along their bottom and forward edges prior to their being presented to the document feed means. Heretofore this has commonly been accomplished by means of a separate jogger that shakes the edge-stacked documents into such mutual alignment. Stacks of mutually aligned documents are then carefully removed from the separate jogger and transported and placed in the hopper. This procedure has been deemed wasteful in that it requires the use of a device of separate entity, and involves the extra step of preliminary jogging followed by careful removal of the documents to the hopper of the document feeding apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,240,489, issued to Pinckney et al, on March 15, 1966, provides for the incorporation of a jogging device within a leading section of the hopper, thereby eliminating the requirement of a separate device and the task of carefully transporting the documents from the jogger to the hopper. The hopper taught by Pinckney is hinged on one side and is struck towards the other side to produce vibrations that serve to jog the documents into mutual alignment. Pinckney et al also disclosed the use of a constant pitch auger in the downstream section of the hopper for dividing the documents into packs, and for maintaining the interdocumental pressures within each pack independently of the variable interdocumental pressures that might occur in the upstream section of the hopper.
The use of augers having a constant pitch to move documents is well known in the art. Another example, in addition to Pinckney, is U.S. Pat. No. 3,078,089 issued to Maidment on Feb. 19, 1963, in which an auger having a variably-diametered thread moves checks from one side of a storage pocket to another. U.S. Pat. No. 3,193,280 issued to Gutierrez on July 6, 1975 discloses an auger for intercepting mail envelopes traveling along a first path and for stacking and directing them toward a feeding means for removal along a second path.